Recommendations of the Editorial team
The Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (32): Peter Frampton – “I’m In You”
A winning streak cannot last forever. And when you’re a successful recording artist with a long career, there inevitably comes a time when fans and critics are disappointed with a new album.
This may be because a big experiment didn’t pay off as hoped. The taste changed quickly. You are suddenly dismissed as a relic of the past. For creating something so bold and innovative that its genius will only be appreciated in years to come. Or that you simply produced a dud due to a combination of physical and creative exhaustion. The unbearable stress of trying to surpass yourself. And perhaps the influence of certain chemical substances.
For truly great artists, a disappointing album can be just a bump in the road to a long, successful career. Bob Dylan has many albums that can safely be described as “disappointing.” And they only made the sequels even more impressive and interesting. The same could be said of David Bowie, Madonna, Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones, and other artists whose careers span multiple generations.
Rating: Also depends on the time
The American ROLLING STONE has compiled a list of the 50 most disappointing albums in music history. There are some important caveats that need to be made before various armies of fans make plans to set our offices on fire. Or unleashing SWAT teams on our homes. We absolutely love some of these albums. An album can be seen as disappointing the moment it comes out. And later be reevaluated forever.
This mainly has to do with the timing and the critical consensus at a particular point in time. And an album that’s considered B+/A- is still disappointing when it follows a string of A/A+ albums.
Also, a disappointing album from an incredibly talented artist like Radiohead or U2 would be considered a masterpiece if it had been published by almost anyone else. (We had a really hard time deciding to include “The King of Limbs” and “Songs of Innocence” here. But we ended up including them.)
(And if you’re going to storm our houses because we recorded your favorite band here, can you at least do it during the day? It’s annoying when they storm in in the middle of the night. Plus, “The King of Limbs” is damn good. Get a grip, Radiohead army.)
The Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (32): Peter Frampton – “I’m In You”
To be fair, everything Peter Frampton did after “Frampton Comes Alive!” released was seen as a disappointment. The 1976 concert album was one of the biggest records of the 1970s. And even Frampton himself grew tired of the songs.
“I couldn’t wait to hear myself on the radio,” he told Rolling Stone in 2019. “And then it got to the point where I thought, ‘I wish they wouldn’t play me so much.'”
The Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (32): Peter Frampton – “I’m In You”
When the enthusiasm wore off, he went into the studio to record a proper album. And although the title track peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, the rest of the album wasn’t as well-received as “Frampton Comes Alive!”
He made matters worse by giving his critics plenty of ammunition when he posed topless. Looking back in 2019, Frampton said it was his own fault. “The album could have been a lot better if I had been in a better mental state at the time,” he said. “But my head exploded right before we went into the studio.”